From JPAC: Recovery members from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command sift through dirt searching for remains or personal effects while excavating a remote recovery site in Vietnam.

Approximately 35 JPAC team members excavated burial and aircraft crash sites for five Americans associated with Vietnam War losses during the 35-day long undertaking, which marked the 104th Joint Field Activity in Vietnam. The mission of JPAC is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts.

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"The troops of today are the machines, coupled with teams trained to serve them. . . . A liking for what is clean, clipped, compact, this is the driving force behind our highly trained and vigorous youth.

"But how can it subsist in an army which is perpetually condemned to ‘getting by’?”

—De Gaulle

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The “Rocket Man,” as we dubbed him, was the most notorious of these lone wolves. Like a rat, he slithered through the slums of Sadr City armed with 100mm supersonic rockets equipped with 5-pound high-explosive warheads, killing and maiming GIs, marines, and Iraqi bystanders. He wasn’t that accurate with his rockets, or apparently too particular who he targeted, which accounted for his high rate of collateral damage against civilians. He must have trained with The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

The Rocket Man quickly rose to the top of our Most Wanted list. We finally got lucky. Either that or he got careless. He popped a rocket at a U.S. Army squad patrolling an alley. He missed and took out the front of a nearby house. What he didn’t know was that I was watching through the camera of the Predator soaring ten thousand feet above his head.

“We finally got the perp!” I exclaimed.

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In the spring of 1865, the bloody saga of America's Civil War finally comes to an end after a series of increasingly harrowing battles.

President Abraham Lincoln's generous terms for Robert E. Lee's surrender are devised to fulfill Lincoln's dream of healing a divided nation, with the former Confederates allowed to reintegrate into American society.

But one man and his band of murderous accomplices, perhaps reaching into the highest ranks of the U.S. government, are not appeased.

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CP Note: There’s a long history of “moonlight requisition” in the military. In this excerpt from The Majestic Twelve: The True Story of the Most Feared Combat Escort Unit in Baghdad, Master Sergeant Jack W. Lynch II, with Rick Lynch, tells the story of the midnight requisitioning of a few necessary vehicles, and a chop-shop that was set-up in 2004 Iraq.

I paused as I looked around at my team, trying to size up each person’s thoughts. . . .

"I don’t think you would have ever volunteered for this duty in the first place if all you came over here to do was punch your ticket. I suspect that all of you are as driven and determined today as you were back in February. I know I am. I do not want to stay in this place, looking at these people, while I slowly become one of them. The war is not over, and there is still a lot we can do. You guys can join the palace pool volleyball team, or we can start looking at some creative ways to get vehicles just like everythingelse we have had to acquire.”

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I can never again see a United States Marine without experiencing a feeling of reverence.

—General Johnson, US Army

CP Note: With the 10th anniversary of 9/11, CommandPosts is taking a look at the last 10 years—and beyond—of books, reports, articles, and images, with a focus on revisiting lessons and highlighting stories, experiences, policies, and commentaries from the past.

In 2003, Craig M. Mullaney led an infantry rifle platoon along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Worlds later, as he worked with his students at the Naval Academy, he realized that—though he thought about them—he hadn't shared his experiences during Operation Enduring Freedom with them. In this excerpt from his book The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education, he revisits his own actions and experiences and wonders how to teach what he learned. 

My teaching was motivated in part by knowledge that one of my students might eventually  command an aircraft carrier, a nuclear-armed submarine, or a Marine regiment. I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty. I was conscious, however, that I was holding back from my students. At the end of one class, a student pointed out that I always evaded questions about my service in Afghanistan. “How come you never talk about it, sir?”

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On February 5th, 1968, during the fighting in Hue City, two young Marines were wounded by a North Vietnamese rocket-propelled grenade.

Corporal Bill Ehrhart, from a small town in rural Pennsylvania, had arrived in Vietnam almost exactly a year earlier. Corporal Ken Takenaga, who had grown up in the small Japanese city of Yatsushiro, arrived in April 1967.

In the aftermath of the explosion, Ehrhart, the less seriously wounded of the two, stayed in the fight. Takenaga's wounds required his immediate evacuation.

Forty-three years later, having reunited after decades, the two men traveled together first to Japan, and then to Vietnam.

This is the story of their friendship and their journey.

I. The House in Hue, 1968

The weapon that got Kenny and me was an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade.

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A twist on Rudyard Kipling's "If":

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of [mountain climb] -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a [Marine Corps Assault Climber] my son!

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CP Note: This is the third article in the three-part "Genesis of Navy SEALs" series from Charles Sasser. The first post is Genesis of the Navy SEALs—The Concept. The second post is Genesis of the Navy SEALS—The Early Years.

Hardly had the Navy SEALs been formed than they were combat tested in Vietnam. Two instructors from Team One arrived in-country on 10 March 1962 to teach the South Vietnamese how to conduct clandestine operations. A month later, the first SEAL mobile training team (MTT) of 19 enlisted men and one officer, Lieutenant (j.g.) Philip P. Holtz, left for Vietnam on a mission to train the South Vietnamese Coastal Force in reconnaissance, sabotage and guerrilla warfare.

During this early period of the war, SpecOps SEALs and Green Berets were “advisors.” It was not until February 1966 that the SEALs entered the war for active combat duty when Team One sent Detachment Golf, consisting of three officers and 15 enlisted men, into the Rung Sat Special Zone near the capital city of Saigon.

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CP Note: With the 10th anniversary of 9/11, CommandPosts is taking a look at the last 10 years—and beyond—of books, reports, articles, and images, with a focus on revisiting lessons and highlighting stories, experiences, policies, and commentaries from the past.

Before deploying four times as a Navy SEAL (to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia) Eric Greitens was a Rhodes and Truman Scholar, who attended Oxford, and focused his doctoral thesis on how international humanitarian organizations can best serve war-affected children. In this section of his book The Heart and the Fist: The education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL, he shows that compassion, honor and strength are as much a part of SEALs as they are humanitarians.

So what makes us different from the Taliban? What distinguishes a warrior from a thug?

Certainly it’s not the quality of our weapons or the length of our training.

Ultimately we’re distinguished by our values.

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